Sarah Breedlove, who later became known as Madam C.J. Walker, was born on Dec. 23, 1867, on the same Delta, Louisiana, plantation where her parents had been enslaved before the end of the Civil War.  This child of sharecroppers transformed herself from an uneducated farm laborer and laundress into one of the 20th century’s most successful, self-made female entrepreneurs.

During the 1890s, Walker began to suffer from a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair. She consulted her brothers for advice and also experimented with many homemade remedies and store-bought products, including those made by Annie Malone, another Black female entrepreneur. In 1905 Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, as a sales agent for Malone, then married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman. After changing her name to “Madam” C.J. Walker, she founded her own business and began selling Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula which she claimed had been revealed to her in a dream. Walker, by the way, did NOT invent the straightening comb or chemical perms.

To promote her products, Walker traveled for a year and a half on a dizzying crusade throughout the heavily Black South and Southeast, selling her products door to door, demonstrating her scalp treatments in churches and lodges, and devising sales and marketing strategies. In 1908, she temporarily moved her base to Pittsburgh where she opened Lelia College to train Walker “hair culturists.”

As her business continued to grow, Walker organized her agents into local and state clubs. Her Madam C.J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America Convention in Philadelphia in 1917 was one of the first national meetings of business women in the country. She used the gathering not only to reward her agents for their business success but to encourage their political activism as well.

By the time she died at her estate in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, she had helped create the role of the 20th century, self-made American businesswoman; established herself as a pioneer of the modern Black hair-care and cosmetics industry; and set standards in the African American community for corporate and community giving.

A’Lelia Bundles is Madam C.J. Walker’s great-great-great-granddaughter. This excerpt is from “Madam Walker Essay” from www.madamcjwalker.com.

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